1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of geophysical prospecting. More particularly, the invention relates to the field of imaging marine seismic streamer data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the oil and gas industry, geophysical prospecting is commonly used to aid in the search for and evaluation of subsurface earth formations. Geophysical prospecting techniques yield knowledge of the subsurface structure of the earth, which is useful for finding and extracting valuable mineral resources, particularly hydrocarbon deposits such as oil and natural gas. A well-known technique of geophysical prospecting is a seismic survey. In a land-based seismic survey, a seismic signal is generated on or near the earth's surface and then travels downward into the subsurface of the earth. In a marine seismic survey, the seismic signal may also travel downward through a body of water overlying the subsurface of the earth. Seismic energy sources are used to generate the seismic signal which, after propagating into the earth, is at least partially reflected by subsurface seismic reflectors. Such seismic reflectors typically are interfaces between subterranean formations having different elastic properties, specifically sound wave velocity and rock density, which lead to differences in acoustic impedance at the interfaces. The reflected seismic energy is detected by seismic sensors (also called seismic receivers) at or near the surface of the earth, in an overlying body of water, or at known depths in boreholes. The seismic sensors generate signals, typically electrical or optical, from the detected seismic energy, which are recorded for further processing.
The appropriate seismic sources for generating the seismic signal in land seismic surveys may include explosives or vibrators. Marine seismic surveys typically employ a submerged seismic source towed by a ship and periodically activated to generate an acoustic wavefield. The seismic source generating the wavefield may be of several types, including a small explosive charge, an electric spark or arc, a marine vibrator, and, typically, a gun. The seismic source gun may be a water gun, a vapor gun, and, most typically, an air gun. Typically, a marine seismic source consists not of a single source element, but of a spatially-distributed array of source elements. This arrangement is particularly true for air guns, currently the most common form of marine seismic source.
The appropriate types of seismic sensors typically include particle velocity sensors, particularly in land surveys, and water pressure sensors, particularly in marine surveys. Sometimes particle displacement sensors, particle acceleration sensors, or pressure gradient sensors are used in place of or in addition to particle velocity sensors. Particle velocity sensors and water pressure sensors are commonly known in the art as geophones and hydrophones, respectively. Seismic sensors may be deployed by themselves, but are more commonly deployed in sensor arrays. Additionally, pressure sensors and particle motion sensors may be deployed together in a marine survey, collocated in pairs or pairs of arrays.
In a typical marine seismic survey, a seismic survey vessel travels on the water surface, typically at about 5 knots, and contains seismic acquisition equipment, such as navigation control, seismic source control, seismic sensor control, and recording equipment. The seismic source control equipment causes a seismic source towed in the body of water by the seismic vessel to actuate at selected times (the activation commonly known as a “shot”). Seismic streamers, also called seismic cables, are elongate cable-like structures towed in the body of water by the seismic survey vessel that tows the seismic source or by another seismic survey ship. Typically, a plurality of seismic streamers are towed behind a seismic vessel. The seismic streamers contain sensors to detect the reflected wavefields initiated by the seismic source and returning from reflective interfaces. The pressure sensors and particle motion sensors may be deployed in close proximity, collocated in pairs or pairs of arrays along a seismic cable. An alternative to having the geophone and hydrophone co-located, is to have sufficient spatial density of sensors so that the respective wavefields recorded by the hydrophone and geophone can be interpolated or extrapolated to produce the two wavefield signals at the same location.
Dual sensor recordings aim to decompose the recorded seismic data into upgoing and downgoing wavefield components. After decomposition, the obtained upgoing wavefields represents a wavefield that no longer contains downward propagating wavefields. In other words, the upgoing wavefields no longer contain interfering reflection events that first have been reflected at the water surface, propagating downwards before being recorded by the seismic receivers, such as hydrophones and geophones. Because these interfering downgoing wavefields, known as “receiver ghosts”, have been removed, the bandwidth of the recorded signal has increased, which aids in the interpretation of the recorded data at later stages.
Interference also occurs on the source side. A seismic source not only generates waves that propagate downward, the source also generates waves that first propagate upwards, before being reflected at the water surface and propagating downwards into the earth. This reflected wavefield, known as a “source ghost”, could be considered to be generated by a mirror source located at the mirror location with respect to the sea surface. This interference reduces the bandwidth of the recorded seismic signal.
One way to overcome the interference of the wavefields generated by the source and its source ghost is to use a multiple source geometry, where the sources are in close proximity and fired at different times. If it is possible to separate the wavefields that have been generated by the individual sources, then a “source deghosting” operator can be applied to the data that aims to collapse the wavefields generated by the source and its ghost into one single source wavefield.
To separate the source wavefields generated by the multiple sources, different approaches can be used. One approach is to make use of existing, well-established noise removal techniques, such as f-k filtering, Radon filtering, or incoherent noise removal techniques. These conventional methods are applied after sorting the data, sorted in a common shot domain, into a different order (such as common receiver domain, common mid-point domain, common offset domain), since the interference effects may become more random in such domains.
Thus, a need exists for a method for separating seismic source wavefields in marine seismic surveys. Preferably, the method is data-driven, in only using recorded seismic data.